Category: Spring Renewal

Today everyone is talking about sustainability, reducing waste, and being greener. Together, we can keep the momentum going throughout the whole year! Below are a few tips for reducing your carbon footprint.

Have Google meal nights
Instead of going to the store and buying more food for dinner, choose a few food items that you have in your fridge or pantry and enter them into Google. For example, type “recipe with beans, frozen broccoli, tomato sauce, cheddar cheese.” Scroll through the recipes and pick something that sounds fun! This is a great way to use cans of food or re-purpose leftovers.

Drop 10 pounds in 1 day.Clean out your pantry and donate the food to your local food bank. Check out www.foodpantries.org to find donation spots in your area.

Make more meatless mealsRed meat can be a great source of protein, but the methane produced by the livestock contributes to America’s greenhouse gases. Choosing plant-based sources of protein for your meals a couple days a week is not only super healthy, it is also more sustainable for the environment. According to the Environmental Working Group:

If you eat one less burger a week for a year, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time.

If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week for a year, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks or shortening everyone’s daily shower by three minutes.

If your four–person family skips steak one day a week for a year, it’s like taking your car off the road for almost three months.

Shop at the Farmers MarketWe have mentioned many times, buying local food is extremely beneficial. Shopping locally can save you money, provide you and your family with nutrient dense great tasting food, and support our local farmers!!! Check out our blog posts to learn about eating seasonally and local farmers in the area. Here and here and here.

Grow your own FoodGrowing your own food is the perfect way to live more sustainability. To get started check out our blog post

Recycle!!
If you are in the Fredrick Country area, check out this site for recycling tips and regulations. For Winchester City, check out this site.

Spring is a time for renewal and rejuvenation. Our ancestors used this time to eat cleansing foods to get ready for the hot summer weather. Nature provides foods such as sprouts, berries, leafy greens, asparagus, chard, and dandelion greens to help enhance the body’s natural detoxing processes.

During this time it is also important to reduce heavy, warming foods such as dairy, excess protein and grains. These foods are great for keeping your body warm in the winter, but do not do well in the spring and summer.

If you have never grown your own food, now is your chance!! Growing your own produce is a great way to add fruits, vegetables, and healing and flavorful herbs to your meals. It doesn’t take much, just a small container of herbs in your kitchen is a great start. Don’t worry, your garden doesn’t need to be perfect and you don’t need to be a master gardener to grow great tasting produce. The key is to just get started!

You can start from seeds indoors, or wait and buy already sprouted plants to put straight into the ground once the weather warms up. Indoors, you can start spinach, lettuce (and lettuce mixes), chard, and kale 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, and potato seeds can be planted in the ground at the end of March (snow permitting). According to garden.org, the frost-free growing season starts around April 29th in the Shenandoah Valley. This will be the time to get your outdoor garden growing!

A few resources you can use to get started include:

Tower Garden is a great way to grow fresh food inside in the winter or on your porch in the spring and summer. The initial cost is easily recuperated by the short grow cycle and great tasting produce you get from using this system.

Herb and veggie companion planting is a great way to improve soil, eliminate bugs, and add flavor to vegetables and herbs. This is a guide from Mother Earth News that lists plants that grow best together.

Square Foot Gardening is a great way to maximize small spaces to get the most yield. I used this method once and the garden would have done excellent except for the fact that I placed the raised bed under 3 shade trees… I hope you have better luck!

Seeds Now is a great resource for seeds, but also has tons of free info to help get you started. This site provides grow zones to determine which plants grow best in your region, along with planting calendars, weed management, watering, composting and so much more.

Whichever plant you decide to start with, I wish you the best of luck. Let use know how it goes in the comments below.

As the weather changes so does the fresh produce. Spring is a great time to begin eating seasonally.

When you buy produce that is out of season, it has to be shipped from around the world to get to you. As a result, factors such as the time, the distance, and the number of people involved to get the food to you, will push the price up.

When you buy what’s in season, you buy food that’s at the peak of its supply, and therefore it costs less for farmers to harvest. When the produce is locally sourced because it’s in season then traveling expenses and storage are not required therefore reducing the production costs that are then passed onto the consumer.

One of the most common reasons for people to not purchase organic produce is because of its high cost. Farm-fresh produce is less likely to be as costly. It is competitively priced with commercially-grown produce, and in some cases can be less expensive.

Many farms in the spring and summertime offer CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). CSA is a way to get farm-fresh produce, and whatever produce is in season, delivered on a weekly or bi-monthly basis for an average price of $7-10 per week. Another great reason to become part of a CSA is that it’s a great way to support your local economy.

Finally, eating seasonally reduces the demand for out of season produce which supports local farming which means less transportation, less refrigeration, less hot houses, and less irradiation of produce. Which means eating seasonally is environmentally friendly.